Cooking to beat the heat

ExpandCollapse

Active Member

A few of us are having icky weather and one member mentioned how difficult it can be to have a variety of recipes that can be cooked and eaten when the heat reaches insane levels.

What are some of your fave recipes?

One of mine is making a cold pizza. It only requires about five minutes of oven time, which can be done at night right before bed when it's coolest anyhow.

All you do is lay out the premade crescent rolls in a can. Don't take them apart, just unroll the roll on a baking sheet and that's your pizza dough. Let it cool.

Toppings? For the sauce we mix together sour cream, cottage cheese, and powdered ranch seasoning in the blender to make it creamy.

We top it with a variety of chopped veggies that we like. Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, etc..

And that's it! A nice, cool, and fast dish.

I got the brilliant idea to use the crock pot, but it adds humidity and is like having a pot of boiling water on the stove all day. BUT! I am considering sticking it on the enclosed back porch and just running a cord out. We have a small table that I could set it on out there.

ExpandCollapse

New Member

Since I'm only cooking for one, I cook my meat in a toaster oven. It's a lot faster than the regular oven. I use the microwave for warming up veges and potatoes that I cooked on the stove and keep refrigerated. I rarely use the regular oven this time of year.

ExpandCollapse

Active Member

The crock pot isn't that bad, really, as long as you leave the lid on it. I let mine cook slowly all day and don't take off the lid until it's dinner time. I've been cooking at night so that we only need to microwave the food later or I just make cold food, like salads and sandwiches.

Some ideas:
pasta salad
boiled eggs (to be eaten later)
tossed chef salad
make pancakes and put in ziplock bags in the fridge--use toaster to warm them for breakfast in the morning

ExpandCollapse

Banned

Crock pot is great any time of the year. We have a "dent can" store in the neighborhood. I like to get bottles of barbecue sauce that I never heard of and will probably never see again. Chunk of cut up meat and onion and a bottle of barbecue, results over rice.

ExpandCollapse

Administrator

Administrator

Yeah, I have a hard time coming up with food in the extreme heat. It gets too hot to even send hubby out to grill so I try to do things inside as much as I can. Fortunately with the a/c's we have, the house has been staying relatively comfortable (around 78 degrees and dry). So I'll cook something quickly now - stir fry, steaming, etc. but only with the exhaust fan on from the moment the stove goes on. So far this week we've had:

taco salad (the meat was already cooked back in May and frozen so I just thawed it in the microwave and added the seasoning. Everything else was cold.)

mussels steamed in wine and salad (the mussels steam in just 3 minutes so that was fast)

a pasta dish with angel hair pasta, bacon and mushrooms that cooked in about 15 minutes.

I'm still waiting to finally bail onto take-out sometime but I'm saving them for when I really need them. We have two restaurants with $20 meals that will feed my whole family of 6 with leftovers and then we have a great little road-side dive that has the best fried seafood that I want to get two orders of clam strips to have with deli salads.

Oh - when I know it's going to get really hot, I boil up pasta and potatoes to make a pasta salad and potato salad. Those can last days even if we eat them for lunch and dinner!

ExpandCollapse

Administrator

Administrator

After three weeks of high heat (most days over 90, all of them over 85), I gave in and ordered Chinese yesterday. I was just too tired to cook and I think I'm growing long ears from eating so many greens. Tonight will be a beef and pepper stir fry and if it's too hot to cook the rice, I'll just go to the Chinese place and pick it up there.

Quick Navigation

Support us!

The management of Baptist Board works very hard to make sure the community is running the best software, best design, and all the other bells and whistles that goes into a forum our size.Your support is much appreciated!